Education

• PhD, Biochemistry, Cellular and Molecular Biology Training Program, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, 1988
• Postdoctoral fellow, The Carnegie Institution of Washington, Dept of Embryology, Baltimore, 1988-1991

Research

• Aging and Development Biology
• DNA replication
• Signal Transduction
• Gene Regulation

Overview

John Tower received his PhD in 1988 from The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Biochemistry, Cellular, and Molecular Biology Training Program, where he worked under the direction of Dr. Barbara Sollner-Webb on the topic of rDNA transcriptional regulation. He subsequently undertook postdoctoral training with Dr. Allan C. Spradling, at the Department of Embryology, Carnegie Institution of Washington, in Baltimore, where he began ongoing studies on Drosophila P element mutagenesis and chorion gene amplification. In 1991 he joined the faculty in the Department of Biological Sciences, University of Southern California, in what is now the Molecular and Computational Biology Program. Dr. Tower has been investigating the molecular genetics of aging in Drosophila since 1989, with a particular emphasis on transgenic technologies, hsps, superoxide dismutase, p53 and the role of sexual differentiation.